Heirs to the Final Empire: Roleplaying Thread

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Haha, well played fellow Great Houses, and thank you a lot for running this Wyrm! I didn't see direct play to player conflict as a part of this game (which it clearly was), so I didn't invest in intrigue really at all. And I got burned pretty badly a couple of times, once because I sent in unclear orders to Wyrm :/. Still, it was fun to try and balance between a loyalty to TLR and having skaa on my side. I was legitimately surprised that the skaa rebellion wasn't supporting me, considering my House's reputation, and the 3 kandra I had among their ranks. They were supposed to attack Wilson there at the end...

[Unodus he/him]

What makes it worse is that in actuality, Farrsolin was never my ally- but someone else I had a spy on and got caught and confronted me about it the turn before you did your infomation planting. Seeing the potential rise of a house war, I only persuaded him to carry the message for me since he was the only one who could carry my warning without exposing my network x.x
After that derailed I withdrew all my spies and became a steward far away from luthadel for the rest of the game, slowly building my metal reserves & mp and distancing myself from a war that never happened..

Sorta wish I'd done all my scheming in google docs now- all my conversations were primarily in character and over pms... X:

End of the day, there's always another secret- eh?

Edited November 7, 2016 by Unodus

[little wilson she/her]

Wait, wait. That trolling got you worried about a House War so you withdrew everything and went away from Luthadel? o.O I....almost feel bad about that. Almost.

Also, Araris, you can blame/thank Orlok for that. He was making I think 80+ wealth every turn and basically bought off the rebellion. So there was never really any chance of them attacking me since he had a pretty good hold on them. Fortunately. All of my MP was out in the outer dominances. Mine and TLR's (which I think the total of both of those was something like 230 or so).

[Comatose he/him]

THat was awesome wyrm!!! Thanks for running this. 

 

So so did anyone in the anti lord ruler alliance see my betrayal coming?  I noticed our document went quiet a while ago and was wondering if I'd been found out.  I thought my spying would be enough to give TLR an edge, but I guess not.

As a side note, had he not given up, couldn't Rashek have compounded food or calories to survive?  I also thought there were some tin cans in the cavern below the palace with food, but maybe that's different in our AU.

 

I was really hoping Vin would make an appearance but I guess that's still to come   

 

On the whole I wish I'd had more time to commit to the mid turn scheming, but it seemed like a struggle a lot of the time just to get my actions together in time. 

 

With the actions to be disclosed are we free to reveal game secrets?  I don't want to spoil anything prematurely.  

 

(Also Wilson, I think I can figure out a way to share the family tree the next time I'm on my computer).  

[Wyrmhero he/him]

I guess this is the ending theme?

The game is indeed now over, so feel free to reveal any information you like - I can guess what you want to say, Comatose

 

The question of Vin is difficult. In this, Kelsier has not been caught and sent to the Pits of Hathsin, so he has not Snapped. He cannot train Vin if she exists (Tevidian Tekiel could exist, I suppose, as a branch off the Tekiel family tree). At the very least, with Kelsier Unsnapped, TLR dead and Elend possibly nonexistent (I had reasons why it was Straff who died >>), canon has certainly been derailed.

 

While Rashek could have compounded calories, the issue is not one of Investiture here, but actually of the metal. The problem for him was not the lack of energy per se, but of the metal required to compound it. And while it is true that there is the cache below the palace (I can't remember if it stored anything other than lerasium beads?), it would be almost impossible for The Lord Ruler to reclaim his Empire like this. As such, better to bow out with dignity and laugh at you all from the next world than stay.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Wyrmhero

[Kasimir he/him]

That was awesome Thanks for GMing this, Chief - I enjoyed playing it, even though I had to bow out early due to RL, and never got to finish some of the character arcs I'd planned for the Herons.

As a brief addendum/coda to Wilson's thing with the spies, I did in fact wind up discovering a Uethorn spy in my own House. As that particular Heron I was playing was practically a sociopath, and also pretty Machiavellian, her instinctive, in-character response? Publicly execute the spy. It was especially a big deal because the skaa rebellion was ongoing and the last thing she wanted was for any of the Heron skaa to think it was okay to turn traitor.

Still, that went down so badly with Unodus it was kind of funny, in retrospect. But there you have it.

[Comatose he/him]

I thought giving up was still very in character for for Rashek; I was just curious .  

Sooooo, did anyone realize or figure out that Elariel was administering the atium mines?

[little wilson she/her]

10 hours ago, Comatose said:

So so did anyone in the anti lord ruler alliance see my betrayal coming?  I noticed our document went quiet a while ago and was wondering if I'd been found out.  I thought my spying would be enough to give TLR an edge, but I guess not.

Well, there was the tip in the writeup about a spy, but I didn't take that seriously. See, we invited you in because my spy network had caught a couple of interesting pieces of information about you: a guarded encampment north of Luthadel, a defection, and one of your public actions on the spreadsheet was setting the skaa against the Steel Ministry. We assumed that you were working against TLR and we decided to invite you in to help because we figured your atium stockpiles (which I knew about) would help and a fourth person couldn't hurt. Plus, we didn't want your plans going against our plans and everything falling apart for everyone.

In retrospect, it's painfully obvious what you were actually doing. Even after you joined, I was getting info on you (not intentionally; the spy I had in Elariel just kept finding things and I kept forgetting to pull him out of an ally's House). I saw skaa transport by House Queade (which, now that I'm thinking about that, Queade was over the prisons), activity around the Mines, more atium stockpiling, and even more atium stockpiling. The real kicker though? You requesting an audience with TLR. Yes, I saw that too. But I just assumed you were doing that to help us. *facepalm*

Fortunately, as you said, it didn't stop the revolution from happening. Likely only because of how much time we'd already spent on it. I'd invested a bunch of time into reputation, particularly with the Steel Ministry, but a bit with the Inquisition and TLR as well (though the Ministry was by far the easiest to gather rep with) and Aonar had spent generations working on the explosives. Plus what Orlok was doing with the skaa.

We started formulating the ideas of revolution or changing history just after Bands released in January, because I'd met Maill and Deathclutch at the release and we were talking about the game. DC had kidnapped Venture's heir as Winter left the game, to help his house's allomancy, and he was using cocaine to drug Vinid's army. Now, I'd already known from other conversations both I and Orlok had had with Wyrm that Wyrm really kind of wanted the history to change. He didn't really want it running exactly like it had in the book. So we thought, well, let's do something about that. DC found cocaine, so I wonder what we can do. We narrowed things down to either going after technology or trying to find Feruchemy, and ultimately decided on technology because we wanted gunpowder. Which we didn't get, but through Aonar's researching trying to find gunpowder, he found the explosives instead.  So...yeah. This revolution was about 9 months in the making.

And the reason the doc went silent wasn't because we didn't trust you. We just were all on Facebook, and had a conversation there and were using that instead of the doc.

 

Also, in case anyone is curious, Maill talked to me after he left the game and admitted that just about any attack on any House that was unclaimed was him. Urbain's winery going up in flames? Zerrung. He said that the Urbain attack was just a test. He wanted to know if it was possible to get in, get out, and not leave any trace. And it was. Using kandra. When Urbain and friends investigated, the trail led to the body of a skaa who had died weeks before the attack and that's where it went cold. Zerrung also tried to kidnap my heir (who was too well-guarded though a Mistborn got injured), and he stole atium from Izenry as Izenry was out stealing atium from Erikell for Zerrung (as in, Zerrung hired Izenry to steal Erikell's atium, and then Zerrung stole Izenry's atium while Izenry was doing the job).

 

And Araris, question: were you told about someone breaking into your archives late one night, but sneaking out before they could be caught? Because if so, that was me. I was researching early history about TLR hoping to find allusions to pre-Ascension weaponry and stuff. That wasn't completely successful, though I'd found a teaser for something intriguing but I wasn't able to follow up on it because that was the same turn my army started having disciplinary problems and then they started defecting. Cocaine in the food and/or water supply of an army is not something I would recommend. I was worried it was going to end with my head in a basket because I couldn't control TLR's army (it's a good thing Jormundgand left the game, because we would've destroyed him instead of going after TLR....I was really not happy with him drugging my army knowing that I would know that he was drugging my army). >>

[Unodus he/him]

*flips table at political shenanigans*

 

 

[Wyrmhero he/him]

2 hours ago, little wilson said:

and he stole atium from Izenry as Izenry was out stealing atium from Erikell for Zerrung (as in, Zerrung hired Izenry to steal Erikell's atium, and then Zerrung stole Izenry's atium while Izenry was doing the job).

I couldn't stop laughing for a long while when I saw that :P.

 

I wanted you guys to play around with history in this because you could. How it was changed was up in the air though - If effort was put into it, I would have been happy with anything. That's partly why I introduced stuff over time as well - So you could play with the various aspects.

 

Also, would you guys like more write-ups to define the aftermath of the game, or would you rather it was left more up to personal interpretation?

Edited November 7, 2016 by Wyrmhero

[Araris Valerian he/him]

I was never told about any breakins . My security wasn't ever that great, since I was hoping to avoid all of the inter-House politics and thus not have to spend resources on that sort of thing. I did get an offer, I think from an Izenry, to assist him in overthrowing the heir to his House. But I just killed him, and that was probably the most involved I was in any politicking.

[little wilson she/her]

Huh. I figured you wouldn't been told something about it, but it was a super stealth mission. It was only Elerek and two of his Mistborn breaking in.

What was everyone's AS at the end? Mine was at 4000 and I'm pretty sure I was one of the highest. I think.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Yeah, mine was 1500. I invested a little in that at the start of the game, but I didn't start as Mistborn and I had a few cycles I didn't get around to marrying my heir actively. Beyond that, I never took advantage of the Wilson Marriage Service.

[little wilson she/her]

Even some of the people who did sign up for it weren't actually able to get anything for it. In Gen 5, the last gen I did the stewardship, I was looking at all the heirs I was supposed to find matches for going "sdajfkgjaeij i have 8 males including my two heirs and only 3 females how is this supposed to work o.O" and everyone else was either inactive or didn't care about PC marriages. I was not happy. Wyrm got Words from me about that. >>

Though it actually balanced out well in the end, so nice job on that front, Wyrm. Total's 114 females to 115 males.

[Unodus he/him]

I was at 2000, which I think was pretty good since I didn't start as an allomatic house or get involved with the marriage shenanigans :B

Put a lot of effort into making Lansing a nice place too

Edited November 7, 2016 by Unodus

[Comatose he/him]

2500 AS for me.  I tried my best to up it as much as possible and spent extra rep when arranging NPC marriages.  

[Wyrmhero he/him]

So, here is the document I used to keep track of stuff. Please don't mention any mistakes, it got rather complicated >>.
 

So, my thoughts on this game - Firstly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, balancing stuff is hard. It's not just a question of what I expect to happen, but what the players will actually do. For example, you guys spent a lot, lot longer setting up your economies than I expected. There was also a huge variety of profit being made across the board, for various reasons. The idea was that eventually your profit would cap due to Upkeep, and that you wouldn't want to just go for Wealth-producing Properties as it meant you'd have to pay more for Items. This didn't really work as well as I'd hoped, as is pretty obvious.

The other aspect is that I was treating this more as a Roleplaying setting than as a game initially - I expected people to make somewhat sub-par moves for the purposes of flavour. That occurred at times, but not as much as I was expecting. I was hoping to see more Roleplaying posts as well. I'm not sure what I could have done to encourage this further though, as it was apparently the time aspect which prevented this from happening more often than not.

It is interesting that I have only recently really encountered a game of this style elsewhere. Originally, it was designed as a cross between Civilisation and a play-by-post RP setting, but I have recently found something which describes this game better. I was recently introduced to Europa Universalis IV, which is a 'Grand Strategy' game, and I think this is a better example. I think this game would be incredible as a computer game by the same people, certainly much better designed :P.

So continuing on, as a GM this was a lot of work on specific days. Overall it wasn't that bad, it's just that it got concentrated on Sunday pretty heavily. To anyone considering doing similar, prepare yourself for this and simplify things as much as possible. As has been said, mistakes were commonly made due to the huge number of moving parts, though I tried to be fair as much as possible. Indeed, my GM philosophy is to try to allow you to do what you want to do, and I find it hard to deny that unless absolutely necessary.

But mostly, I wanted you guys to have fun. And it looks like that aspect was achieved :).

[Unodus he/him]

wow, I didn't realise there was so much going on behind the scenes x.x
 

[Comatose he/him]

Sorry to kind of necro this (one month isn't too bad right?), but I finally found time to grab the link to the family tree Wilson and (mostly just Wilson) I set up.  It's not complete, but its fun to play around with.

I'm not sure if the link will work for more than one person, so if it doesn't work, let me know and I'll create more links.

http://www.familyecho.com/?p=Q68D3&c=16z0lezl0q6&f=657866704298954460